But when the “Black Knight” rode up the ramp to the royal box and Gloucester dipped his head in Bessie’s direction, she was stunned and began blushing madly. The feelings she bore for her uncle Richard were so new and unsettling.
So forbidden,
it had never occurred to her that they might in any way be returned.
She gathered her wits quickly and stood smiling demurely.
But she was without a token, she realized, having given her handkerchief to Edward. After a flustered moment of indecision, she tugged at a ribbon holding her sleeve together and, pulling it away, laid bare her whole arm. Bessie heard her mother gasp, but the gesture was appreciated by the crowd, for it perfectly evoked the romance of chivalric love. Bessie dared not look at Lady Anne, fearful that the Duchess of Gloucester might recognize the love for her husband that was seething in her niece’s heart.
Bessie saw her mother straighten in her seat in anticipation of her brother, the “White Hermit,” prancing his horse up the ramp to demand one of her jewels as his token. But to everyone’s delight, and her mother’s horror, Rivers trotted his mount to the stand next to the royal box and lowered his lance to Nell Caxton.
Bessie could see her friend blushing madly. But smiling delightedly, Nell lifted from her neck a small jewel on a gold chain and hung it over the lance tip. The crowd cheered their approval of his choice.
As Rivers and Gloucester galloped onto the field, Bessie sought Nell’s eyes as they silently congratulated each other on their honors. The jousters made for opposite ends of the tilt wall, calming and staying their horses beneath them in the moments before the signal.
Then the flag dropped and Bessie was riveted by the sight of one white and one black knight riding hell-bent toward a terrible clash, evoking Armageddon itself.
Impact! Rivers’s lance broke clean on Gloucester’s shield, but her uncle Richard stayed firmly seated, wavering in his posture not at all, as though a gnat had grazed him. Cheers went up in the risers, where all were on their feet, shouting their approval and calling bets and jovial insults.
The jousters rode back the way they’d come. They were helped down from their mounts on wooden steps by their “seconds” and a cadre of grooms, then up into the saddles of the next set of horses.
Bessie could hear in the risers closest to the royal box women laughing great belly laughs and calling out lewd exchanges about the challengers on the field. “I like my men small and hard.”
“Give me long and strong.”
“Just give me a man!” But clearly the White Knight was the favorite of this Ludlow crowd, and they began to shout his name, the sound flowing into a chant.
“Rivers! Rivers! Rivers!”
The second round began. The thundering hooves, the terrible moment of contact. A shrieking sound and the sight of wood exploding above the combatants’ heads. A broken lance—nay, a
splintered
lance—fell slowly to the ground. It was revealed as Gloucester’s weapon! He had won the round soundly, the many slender shards of wood a testament to his strength and fury.
Bessie cheered wildly for her champion, ignoring her mother’s disapproving stare. Her uncle Rivers was unhurt, riding away waving at the crowd from whom a loud murmuring could be heard.
Was their favorite lord defeatable?
When the third pair of horses began clattering down the
lists, there were now two names shouted from the fickle crowd.
“Rivers!”
“Gloucester!”
“Rivers!”
“Gloucester!”
When they met this time Gloucester received a good jolt, but Rivers’s lance remained intact. Neither man had scored.
With only one round to go, Gloucester might still come good, defeat Rivers! The crowd was stamping now, rocking the risers, shrieking deliriously, for, they knew, it was the fiercest match they would ever in their whole lifetime witness.
The final charge began and the roar round Bessie deafened her. Her whole body was trembling. It was a blur of galloping beasts, flashing colors, glittering steel. Impact! And a sight un-believable to her eyes.
Richard of Gloucester was aloft!
Time stilled, and for an eternity his body was balanced, his shield upon the tip of Lord Rivers’s lance. Gloucester’s horse—its rider suspended above it—galloped on. Then he fell, heavily, a pile of dark crashing metal. He lay motionless.
Bessie froze, though chaos howled all round her. She turned to see the king on his feet, he, tightly clutching Lady Anne’s white-knuckled fingers.
On the field, Gloucester’s second and his grooms rushed to their master’s side. His helmet was lifted gently from his head.
There was blood at the corner of his mouth.
Bessie could hear Lady Anne groan piteously.
“There is no blood from his ear,” she heard her father say to Anne. “Thank Christ, none from his ear.” Silence descended on the assembled. Six men were gathered round Richard of Gloucester’s supine form. Lord Stanley strove to remove Richard’s chest plate. A leg moved. A cry went up
from the crowd! An arm rose feebly, but the man’s eyes were still closed. Without warning, the lifted arm arched violently, the metal gauntlet smashing his groom hard across the cheek and nose. The man fell back with a cry, bloodied. But now Richard was stirring, coming back to life. They helped him to sitting.
Even from where she sat, Bessie could see confusion still clouding Gloucester’s eyes. He was raised up by his men, all groaning metal joints and parts straightened as well as possible.
How quickly they put him to standing,
she thought, then realized that standing dazed was far more comely for a proud knight than—for one moment more than necessary—lying helpless and supine in the center of a jousting field. An armored knight on foot was a clumsy, clanking sight, and Gloucester’s defeated walk from the tilt yard was horrible to watch. Another cheer went up from the risers. It was sincere enough, thought Bessie, for it was not a bloodthirsty crowd, this. Her uncle would live down the shame of the fall and defeat at Rivers’s hand. The pathetic flailing arm giving injury to his groom would be far harder for him to bear.
But few eyes were following Gloucester now.
Lord Rivers was the great and glorious victor of the day. Helmet held proudly under one arm, he rode his prancing horse for a second time before Nell Caxton. In his metal fingers he clutched her jeweled pendant, then raised it high as the approving roar grew louder. Now he touched it to his lips, then his heart.
Nell must be swooning,
Bessie thought. There’d be no sleeping tonight.
Then, with a graceful swivel of the beast underneath him, the champion began parading before the adoring crowd, the chant of his name, “Rivers!
Rivers!
RIVERS!” sundering the bright afternoon.
Never, thought Bessie, had she ever felt so torn, both joyful for her dear friend Nell and miserable for her defeated and dis-graced uncle Richard.
he Wednesday Westminster market was a great living Tbeast, thought Bessie as she and Dickon, followed by four guards, picked their way through the crowded thoroughfare.
The castle and abbey together were the beast’s head, Totehill Street its long torso, the small lanes and alleys jutting from it, its writhing limbs. Farmers had traveled many miles the night before to bring their produce, meat, and fowl to the makeshift stalls. They were careful to leave clear the windows of the per-manent shops, or else face loud, angry protests from those merchants whose displays might be compromised. But all hawked their wares with equal fervency.
“Wet fish here, caught this morning with me own hands!”
“Fresh bread, brown and black, and
manchette
white as snow!”
“Cabbages, onions and cabbages!”
“Fat hens here! Duck eggs! Chicks for sale!” All who saw Bessie recognized her as their princess and not only called out friendly greeting to her, but bade her send their regards to her friend and theirs, Nell Caxton.
Westminster precinct itself was a thriving corridor, what with the royal residence housed next door. Totehill Street ran east, paralleling the river, to the Tower of London, where much government took place, and therefore much traffic passed through. Rich traffic at that. When Parliament was in session everyone prospered, from the greengrocers to the silkwomen to the cutpurses. Gold- and silversmiths grew positively rich.
Bessie had not been out for a day of shopping since the family’s
return from Ludlow, but this morning she had begged her mother’s permission for the outing. Dickon had insisted on joining her. It was his first foray out onto Totehill Street, and the queen had demanded that four burly guards come to protect them.
“From what?” Bessie had demanded with irritation. “I’ve encountered nothing but love and respect from everyone I meet outside the walls.”
“There are whores and cutpurses and rapscallions in the streets,” her mother had insisted.
“Well, I’d say the two of us are amply protected with a quartet of armed soldiers.”
“Keep your eyes on your brother. Make sure he doesn’t speak with any ruffians,” the queen instructed her daughter.
“I shall personally introduce him to a very nice murderer I know.”
Now Bessie smiled, remembering the look of fury on her mother’s face. She knew she was defying God’s commandment, the one that admonished children to honor their parents, but surely God had never counted on Elizabeth Woodville.
They’d made a stop at the brewery, as Nell had asked Bessie in her last letter to pass a message along to Maggie Brown the brewer. She was a manly sort of woman, stout, with large square hands and a square, wide-mouthed face. Whilst Bessie was well known at the brewery from her visits with Nell, Maggie had never before laid eyes on the little prince.
“Your Grace,” she said, and dipped into a low curtsy that was comical in light of her masculine demeanor. “How honored I am for your visit.”
Dickon glowed. Although the obeisance was customary, he’d never received a greeting so sincere and enthusiastic outside the court. He struggled briefly for a fitting reply, then said,
“Your husband’s brewery is very fine.”
“I haven’t got a husband, Your Grace.”
“Then your father . . . ?”
“Sadly deceased,” said Maggie.
“
You
are the brewer?” he said, perplexed.
“
Femme sole,
that’s what I am.”
“A woman has rights to do business without a man, Dickon,” Bessie explained to her brother. “There are many such women in London.”
“How does a lady become such a thing?” the boy asked Maggie.
“Well, first, m’lord, I am no lady. But in my case my husband died. I’d always helped him at the shop, and when he passed away I chose to run the business.”
“I see,” he said, with so adult a tone that Bessie was forced to bite her lip to keep from smiling.
They continued through the market, filling Bessie’s basket with vegetables, a round of cheese from the white meats store, and an array of sweet confections Dickon had carefully chosen from a long case at the bakery. A dozen goose eggs were had from the poultry stall managed by a brawny young man, handsome but for his toothless visage. Dickon found it difficult to tear his eyes away from the gummy pink smile and finally asked, “How did you lose your teeth, sir?”
“Football,” he replied with a great grin. “Every Sunday after church. We love the game, my mates and me. They’ve tried to outlaw it, the clergy has, but nobody listens. I got kicked in the face a time too many. I still have my
back
teeth, see?” He pulled away his gums to reveal a number of intact choppers. “I can chew just fine.”
Dickon’s face was aglow. “I should like very much to learn football.” He turned to his sister. “Do you think Mother would allow me?”
“You would grow horns and a tail first,” she replied.
When their baskets were full, the royal children and their guard proceeded back along Totehill Street market and in through Westminster’s walls. Bessie dismissed the soldiers at the almshouse, where she had stopped to visit her friends who lived there.
Dickon surprised Bessie, wishing to visit with them as well.
She knew her brother could hardly wait to bestow the baked gifts he’d bought for his family, and he had never before shown an interest in the twelve old men. Yet he insisted on following her through the gate of the pretty, gardened courtyard surrounded by a dozen cottages. The Church supported these pensioners, retired from their trades, each who lived in his own simple but comfortable home till his death. The prince and princess were greeted with the greatest warmth by the men, who, by their own admission, were the most grateful individuals at Westminster. They were grateful, they said, for they were poor men spared the humiliation of beggary in old age by the charity of Westminster’s abbot.
Bessie watched Dickon handing out their offerings of meat and eggs, bread and cheese, for their larders, and was warmed by his sincere interest in them, and their delight that the little Duke of York was showing concern for them.
Dickon even accepted an invitation by their father’s retired dog keeper, Tom Wilson, to come in and see his humble hearth and home, and “the oldest dog in England,” his favorite hound, who never left the fireside.
Bessie was proud of her little brother, who was displaying, even at his tender age, true princely behavior.
When she saw one of the day’s escorts hurrying toward the almshouse garden, Bessie sighed. The guard had a look on his face that said he’d been savaged by the queen, perhaps for failing
to bring the young royals all the way back to their mother’s presence.
“Princess,” the guard began, most agitated. “You must come quickly. Where is your brother?”
“I’ll get him,” she said, and made for Master Wilson’s cottage to fetch Dickon. “Tell Mother we’ll be there presently.”
“Yes, Princess.” The guard hurried away.
Nell was right about one thing, thought Bessie. There were benefits to marrying a foreign prince, the first being that she would never again have to take an order from Elizabeth Woodville.
M
y life,
thought Nell as she gazed at the pretty, golden-haired boy sitting across the desk from her,
has become a long, sweet dream.